Learning to Listen: Changes in Children's Brain Activity Following a Listening Comprehension Intervention

Abstract

"Are you LISTENING?" may be one of the most frequent questions preschoolers hear from their parents and teachers, but can children be taught to listen carefully-and thus better comprehend language-and if so, what changes occur in their brains? Twenty-seven four- and five-year-old children were taught a language simulation strategy to use while listening to stories: first, they practiced moving graphics on an iPad to correspond to the story actions, and then they practiced imagining the movements. Compared to a control condition, children in the intervention answered comprehension questions more accurately when imagining moving the graphics and on a measure of transfer using a new story without any instruction and with only immovable graphics. Importantly, for children in the intervention, the change in comprehension from the first to the sixth day was strongly correlated with changes in EEG mu and alpha desynchronization, suggesting changes in motor and visual processing following the intervention. Thus, the data are consistent with our hypothesis that a language simulation listening comprehension intervention can improve children's listening comprehension by teaching children to align visual and motor processing with language comprehension.

Keywords: effortful control; learning; listening comprehension; sensorimotor system; simulation; transfer of training.

Figure 1

One page from one chapter in the story “A Celebration to Remember.” Children in the intervention condition use physical or imagined manipulation when encountering a sentence in blue font. Here, the child imagines moving the girl to the mangos and then to the garlic. In the control condition, children are instructed to think carefully about the sentences in blue font. Source: EMBRACE iPad application.

Figure 2

Performance on comprehension questions. Error bars are ± one standard error.

Figure 3

(a) Relation between change in text comprehension and change in mu desynchronization measured at the central electrodes for the intervention condition; (b) relation between change in text comprehension and change in mu desynchronization measured at the central electrodes for the control condition; (c) relation between change in text comprehension and change in alpha desynchronization measured at the occipital electrodes for the intervention condition; (d) relation between change in text comprehension and change in alpha desynchronization measured at the occipital electrodes for the control condition. In each panel, the shaded region corresponds to the 95% confidence interval for the slope of the regression line.